Tim Graham goosed by Facebook parody

Look out, Jim Hoft. There's a new entrant in the ongoing Dumbest Man on the Internet contest, and he's coming on hot.

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham, reputed to be one of the finest media critics the right has to offer, took to the pages of NewsBusters this morning to complain about a New York Times article on the euthanizing of hundreds of Canada geese in Brooklyn. Upset at what he sensed to be the “animals are morally superior to arrogant reasoning humans” tone of the piece, Graham wrote: “Times reporter Isolde Raftery channeled shock and disgust that authorities would euthanize Canada geese in Prospect Park for the sake of human air travelers -- even as the nation still recalls pilot Chesley Sullenberger's heroic Hudson River landing of a jet that failed after hitting geese.”

But here's where it gets good:

Raftery left out the animal-rights partisans at the “Stop the Goose Holocaust” page on Facebook, which declares “This is a group devoted to stopping the Holocaust of New York area Canada Geese by that Nazi psycho Michael Bloomberg, who mocks and jests about it. He claims to be pro-immigrant but obviously hates Canadians, and especially Black Canadians, which the geese are.”

I can think of two good reasons why the Times would omit the “Stop the Goose Holocaust” Facebook group from their article. First, if you click through you'll see the group has 15 members -- not exactly the stuff of national note. Second, the page is quite clearly a parody, as should have been obvious to Graham when he was cutting and pasting their mission statement describing the geese as black Canadian immigrants.

But I guess it's comforting to know that the NewsBusters crew are equally inept at criticizing random Facebook groups as they are the media.